R.I.P. the Kirky Legend

               R.I.P. Kirky Legend - Passed away on 14 July 2013         

This is a rather unusual post for me, in that it is about a man I saw every day (for about thirty years) until about a week ago, Jim Rae.

Jim looked like a man of the road, with his tattered oilskins, large rubber galoshes and a huge backpack.

Whenever I went into the Village he was always there, striding along the road with his peculiar loping gait, or standing at one of the bus stops.

He wasn't homeless though, he apparently lived in a modern appartment near Townhead in Kirkintilloch .

Goodbye Jim, you will be sadly missed.

A Tribute Page has been established on Facebook  at  https://www.facebook.com/pages/RIP-Kirky-Legend/398575646920819?hc_location=stream

Photographs are courtesy of that Page.

Please note that the organiser of the Kirky Legend Facebook page has arranged to have a collector, or collectors at the Kirkintilloch Canal Festival on Saturday 24 August to raise a fund to pay for a monument to Jim Rae.

William Beckford - An Enigma

                                William Beckford 1760-1844     

I first became aware of William Thomas Beckford when I read his Arabian/ Gothic novel  Vathek in the 1960s. Then, as now I had a fascination for the weird and wonderful. Vathek was orignally written by him in French.

 William Beckford,was born on 1 October 1760, the son of William Beckford and Emma Hamilton, and as a young man he was believed to be the richest man in England with a fortune, then, of one million pounds.

His achievements were many, he was a Novelist, a Poet and a Composer, having studied under Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. He had an art.collection which included works by Raphael, Bellini, Claude and Caneletto  
He also built Fonthill Abbey and the infamous Lansdown Tower (Beckford's Tower), the tallest structure in England at the time.

The Tower, however was very badly constructed, and had to be rebuilt. He also constructed a pleasure garden,known as Beckfords Ride which he used to walk each day with a dwarf servant and his four dogs.

By the time he died, on 2 May 1844, his fortune had dwindled to £100.000.

Further information about Beckford can be found at   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Thomas_Beckford

The Kennedy Clan was Irish - True?

                                                               
                                                     John F Kennedy

                         The Kennedy Clan was Irish - True ?

Wrong, the Kennedy Clan originated in Scotland, and were originally of Pictish/Norse stock, with origins in Scotland's Western Isles. In the 11th and 12th century, their Homeland was in and around Dunduff Castle, near Carrick in Ayrshire.Their later Clan Seat was Culzean Castle near Turnberry. Among their enemies in Scotland was the Bruce Clan led by King Robert the Bruce. They left Scotland in the 12th and 13th centuries to settle around Tipperary in Ireland.

Sartre's Roads to Freedom - The Mystery of the BBC's Lost Tapes.

Just over 43 years ago the BBC first aired a dramatisation of Jean Paul Sartre's Roads to Freedom Trilogy.

The first episode was shown on the 10th of April 1970, and the last episode was shown on 27th December 1970 (my 20th Birthday.

The series starred Michael Bryant as Mathieu Delarue, Daniel Massey as Daniel Sereno, Rosemary Leach as Marcelle, Clifford Rose as Jacques and Simon Ward as Philippe.

It seemed likely that the BBC wiped the tapes, despite the series being nominated for several awards.  

For years the BBC cloaked the existence of recordings in secrecy, leading to the belief that no recordings existed. This year a few hundred people were privileged to see the whole series screened at the British Film Institute in London. It sold out.

Just after, its director James Cellan Jones wrote:
"I directed Roads to Freedom for the BBC in 1970. It had some faults but was one of the best things I've ever done; it was repeated on BBC2 in 1976/7. It was shown at the NFT on May 12th & 13th, 2012 to full houses at both sessions. This was entirely due to Marcus Prince of the BFI who persuaded the BBC to lend them new copies.

I would love to see this show broadcast again and was encouraged by the enthusiasm of the NFT audience who I advised to write to the BBC requesting a retransmission or the publication of of it on DVD."

The series was last shown in 1976/77 and the last episode was shown the week before I bought my first VHS Video Recorder. 

At the moment the fragment  below is all that exists of the series on Youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CjPeap6Xyo

A Petition to bring back the series can be found at  http://www.gopetition.co.uk/petitions/bbc-s-roads-to-freedom-1970.html